Contents

• The influence of postmodern picturebooks on three boys’
  narrative competence   Sylvia Pantaleo
  Abstract:   This article examines the written and visual texts of three elementary male students and discusses how the boys' experiences with a collection of postmodern picturebooks influenced their narrative competence. The boys were participants in a multifaceted study that explored Grades 3 and 4 students' understandings of and responses to postmodern picturebooks. The research also examined how the children used their knowledge of the literary and illustrative interactive devices in the picturebooks to create their own print texts. Analysis of the boys' texts revealed that they were able to identify, understand and create narratives that were sophisticated, complex and metafictive in nature.
  
• Word games: the importance of defining phonemic awareness for professional discourse   Regina Walsh 
  The debate about the importance of phonemic awareness in literacy learning has absorbed extensive professional time and funding. This article suggests that the lack of an accurate definition for phonemic awareness is a major contributor to this unresolved debate. Only with precise definitions of constructs can productive debate take place. Definitions are proposed for key terms including phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonemic skills/application.
  
• Learning from their miscues: Differences across reading ability and text difficulty  Lauren Beatty & Esther Care
  This study explores children’s use of three language cueing systems for reading. Differences are investigated across reading ability and text difficulty. Errors (miscues) were coded in order to analyse patterns across the oral reading strategies used by 100 students from Grades Preparatory, 1 and 2 ranging in age from 5 to 8 years old. Analysis of miscues revealed that Average and Above Average readers used the visual and sound properties of text to aid their reading more frequently than did Below Average readers. Grammatical relationships in text were more likely to be maintained by students when reading easier texts while sound cues were used more frequently when reading difficult texts. The study showed that the use of the grapho-phonic cueing system plays an important role in reading.
  
• Bridging multimodal literacies and national assessment
  programs in literacy   Len Unsworth & Eveline Chan
  This paper notes that reading in today’s world necessarily entails sophisticated integrative processing of meanings afforded by the combination of images and language. Secondly it notes that Australia’s first National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) does not reflect this multimodal conceptualisation of reading comprehension. Thirdly it outlines some of the results of an ARC-funded study using the NSW Basic Skills Test (BST), explicating different types of image/language relations entailed in test questions and the relative difficulty of these. Fourthly the paper outlines the results of the final phase of the study, which investigated year six students’ understanding of different types of image/language relations in online texts. Finally, implications for the development of a National Assessment Program that takes due account of the multimodal nature of contemporary paper and screen based texts, will be discussed.
  
• An investigation of the incorporation of Information and
  Communication Technology and thinking skills with Year 1 and 2 students    Marlene Walters & Heather Fehring
  It is often assumed that young children, commonly called ‘digital natives’, are coming to school already computer literate, albeit through the use of electronic games or the practice of text messaging. In this article it is argued that the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) for classroom curriculum purposes nevertheless needs to involve explicit teaching as well as experiential learning. This paper reports an investigation into the enhancement of learning, specifically thinking skills, through the utilisation of ICT with Year 1 and 2 students. The study was set within a context of inquiry curriculum practices, and teaching and learning techniques incorporating the de Bono thinking strategies. The research design incorporated case study and practitioner action research approaches. The results of the study document four stages exhibited by the children as they learned to use ICT within the classroom environment: Discovering and Engaging; Demonstrating; Analysing; Synthesising. The implications for teachers incorporating ICT in order to enhance students’ learning are illustrated through teaching and learning activities relevant to each of these four stages.